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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28612788">The Golden Boy / part 1 of 2</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/freaksout/pseuds/freaksout'>freaksout</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A game of chess [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Iron Man (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Belting, Child Abuse, Dreams and Nightmares, Explosions, Homophobic Language, Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, James "Rhodey" Rhodes &amp; Tony Stark Friendship, James "Rhodey" Rhodes &amp; Tony Stark at MIT, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, No Underage Sex, Non-Consensual Spanking, Panic Attacks, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Spanking, Tony Angst, Tony Stark &amp; Dummy - Freeform, Tony Stark Has Nightmares, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Underage Drug Use, Underage Kissing, Underage Violence, Weapons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:13:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,180</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28612788</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/freaksout/pseuds/freaksout</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The childhood of Tony Stark had its good bright moments, but also its shadows. Especially when his godfather Obadiah has started his "therapy sessions" to "fix" the boy's problems, or when his father Howard has discovered his son kissing a boy.<br/>Until one day Howard Stark decided his 12 years old son was ready for MIT...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edwin Jarvis &amp; Tony Stark, Howard Stark &amp; Tony Stark, Obadiah Stane &amp; Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A game of chess [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Golden Boy / part 1 of 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The fic introduced Tony's perspective in the series "A game of chess" but it could be read alone.<br/>Please, be aware that some scene could be disturbing but there is NO explicit sexual content.<br/>As always, sorry for language mistakes!</p><p>For the followers of the series "A game of chess"; here we discovered which song Tony kepts singing to himself when he was upset and why (see end note for the song references). This is all an idea of mine I had while listening to said song!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>There will come a soldier </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Who carries a mighty sword </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He will tear your city down</em>
</p><p>
  <em>O lei o lai o lord! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>O lei o lai o lei o lord!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The first words Tony remembered were his mother’s, while Maria Stark was singing at him. He was his 3<sup>rd</sup> birthday and he was sitting next to her, his eyes barely making past the piano keys his mother was playing.</p><p>She smiled at him.</p><p>Someone ruffled his hair from behind. His father took him up, and cuddled him at the rhythm of the song, until it was over. Then they ate the cake Jarvis has cooked, and his father allowed him one extra slice because now he was his “little man”. They took a family portrait, all together, Jarvis included.</p><p>His mother gave him his present: a freshly printed book on mechanics the boy seemed to desperately want when they went in the bookshop in the city center. The owner was scared by the little kid who ignored colored books and preferred pictures of circuits and wheels.</p><p>His father has also bought him a child book of a knight in a shining golden armor and a red cape. He has read the book to him before he felt asleep that night.</p><p>____________________________________________________</p><p>Tony was 5 years old, and already know how to read and solve complex equations.</p><p>That his mind worked faster than a normal kid or an average adult was pretty clear to everyone.</p><p>That he needed to run, make movements and work with his little puffy hands it was also pretty clear: the boy simply couldn’t stay still for long, and has difficulty to focus on what his private teachers were saying for longer than 5 minutes. They said the boy was problematic, but his father thought differently, and started to carry him to work.</p><p>Tony loved when his father brought him to the big lab of the Stark Industries, he loved when he could run around the various objects they were assembling, when he could hear the engineers talking of the projects, when his father was explaining him and them a new fancy idea he had.</p><p>Soon after they arrived, however, his father was usually taken away by secretaries and co-workers who needed his signatures on documents, who had to show him fees and reports, or some high rank military guys who wanted a small chat with him. And Tony found himself running around on his own in the lab and the offices, tailgated by Jarvis who tried not to lose sight on him and to avoid he got hurt while he was “playing” with some electronic circuit someone has abandoned incomplete on the floor.</p><p>Sometimes, Tony ran in the meeting room where he heard the loud voice of Obadiah Stane shouting numbers and incoming percentages to the company’s partners.</p><p>“Uncle Obie!” the boy called running to him.</p><p>“Hey! If this isn’t my golden boy!” the big man smiled at him, raising him in his arms. “Don’t worry, Jarvis, I’ve got him now!”</p><p>And he carried him around all day, seeing how the little Stark boy was able to create things from scratch and just let go his imagination. Many of his qualified top engineers couldn’t even dare to take the pace of the little boy, who seemed to have been blessed by genius.</p><p>But uncle Obie mocked him because he was so easily distracted, because he started many things at the same time and barely finished one.</p><p>“This attitude of yours could cause accidents when working with explosive things like this, Tony boy!” he had told him.</p><p>But he was smiling and Tony didn’t think that he was really pissed.</p><p>_____________________________________________________</p><p>At 6 years old, indeed, Tony completed his first circuit, with the extreme proud of both his father and his uncle Obadiah. They both posed satisfied in front of the camera.</p><p>However, they were too busy to celebrate, so Jarvis bought him a cake they ate alone in the lab, next to Tony’s newly built electronic circuit.</p><p>The boy wondered why the others have left him alone, and thought that maybe if he did better, next time they would have eaten the cake with him and Jarvis.</p><p>Dad and uncle Obie seemed so fond of that things that kill people, so maybe if he created a better one they would have been happy and proud of him.</p><p>Tony didn’t remember much of what happened few months later, when he was trying to fix a laser gunshot both his father and Obadiah had said it was impossible to make shooting. They were extremely pissed, and his father has shouted to him while he grabbed his arm and threw him off the room. It hurt.</p><p>So Tony thought to help them. If he managed to fix that toy, maybe his father would have stopped shouting and hurting him. He would have smiled again and they would have sung their song while mum played the piano and Jarvis cooked.</p><p>What happened next in the lab was told to Tony later by Stane himself.</p><p> </p><p>He told him that he and his father were at a board meeting, when they heard a huge explosion coming from the lab. They went down and found that part of the lab was on fire, and there were several people hurt running out of it.</p><p>“Where is Tony?!” he had heard Howard shouted frantically to everyone.</p><p>Then Jarvis had emerged from the smoke and the fire, carrying the little boy, fainted but apparently unarmed apart from a huge bump on his head.</p><p>“He- he was experimenting with a new power source for laser weapon” the butler had explained. “I- I didn’t imagine it was going to work… no one of the engineers did believe it…”</p><p>“But it worked! That’s amazing! We’ve never managed to fix that laser, Howie! And the boy did!” Obadiah had exclaimed, with a greedy light in his eyes. “He is really a golden boy you made, Howard!”</p><p>But Howard Stark was just looking down at his kid like he was afraid of what he was seeing. Then he has ordered Jarvis to bring him to the hospital, while he fixed the mess the boy had created. The butler was intoxicated as well, so Obadiah took care of the boy.</p><p> </p><p>When he woke up, Tony knew from uncle Obie that his father was pissed. Really pissed indeed.</p><p>He told him what the boy already knew: that he had made a mess because probably he was distracted, that he lacked focus, and that his attitude might have seriously damaged the company and maybe killed someone.</p><p>Tony was confused and ashamed and asked him what he had to do, whether he could help fixing him.</p><p>He remembered his uncle had smiled reassuring at him, by telling him that he may knew a way, even if Howard didn’t agree with that. And, most importantly, no one would have had to know about that.</p><p>“What is it, Obie?” Tony had asked.</p><p>His unlce was smiling when he explained to him everything.</p><p>That was when the “therapy sessions” have started.</p><p>______________________________________________</p><p>At 10 years old, Tony had clear that his father was ashamed of him, because he was just a disappointment.</p><p>He had indeed blown up part of the facilities other three times, each time managing to run out almost without a scratch thanks to Jarvis. They were just lucky nobody got seriously hurt.</p><p>He was thinking that “therapy” proposed by his uncle Obie was not that effective, apart that he felt ashamed and dirty every time. He hadn’t told anyone, because Obadiah had told him not to do, that it was part of the therapy. And also that if they have known, they would have probably sent Tony to an institution, where they close you in a cold and dark place.</p><p>Tony was terrified at the perspective and didn’t say a word to anyone about what was happening between him and his uncle when they were alone. He has started to have nightmares, though, and in those nightmares monsters emerged from under his bed or his wardrobe: they all smelled of smoke.</p><p>When he woke up from one of his nightmare, Tony was in dread panic but he had nobody to call for: his mother wasn’t feeling well and he didn’t dare to disturb her, and his father… well, the only time he had woke him up because of a nightmare he has beaten him with the belt until his mother had begged him to stop.</p><p>The only person in his family who just run to him, and cuddled him till he has calmed down was Jarvis, and he was the one Tony trusted more. It has become an habit, everytime he had a nightmare (that is, almost every night) to look for Jarvis and sleep with him reading Tony stories until the boy has fallen asleep again.</p><p>Tony also suspected that Jarvis has noticed that something was not right, because he asked him several times if he was fine or if he wanted to tell him something. But Tony was just too scared and ashamed, and he has lied to him as well.</p><p>“It’s just a nightmare, Jarvis!” he had murmured.</p><p>And then his father took Jarvis away from him. After all, he was at his father’s service and Stark senior has started to be out of town quite often. He had discovered a better mechanism to search the Ocean and find out where Captain America’s plane has crashed, so he disappeared for months with Jarvis in a boat on the Artic.</p><p>And every time he came home empty-handed, and pissed. He had started to drink. And sometimes when he was drunk and pissed, he has started to regularly raise his hands on Tony until Maria Stark intervened to make him stop.</p><p>Tony had hoped that he could cheer up his father by building something unique, something unrelated with weapons and explosions.</p><p>That was why he created his first arm robot, which could grab things, and had a neural network mechanisms similar to the one of a dog or a small child: basically speaking, he could be trained to learn different paths of actions through time, by autonomously making association from stimuli to reactions.</p><p>When he showed it to Howard and Obadiah, the second was indeed quite proud and praised him by calling in front of the press “the golden boy of Stark Industries”.</p><p>His father, however, pointed out all the flaws of the robot, whose grab was too tight, his movements too imprecise, and his neural network resembled the one of a dummy child. Everyone liked that nickname and Tony himself called his new creation “Dummy”, hoping to please his father. But Howard Stark posed for the press and then ignored his son for the rest of the day. He also took Jarvis away with him, so nobody bought Tony a cake this time.</p><p>A few hours later, when everyone has gone away, Obadiah found the boy under his lab desk in tears. Dummy was trying to pass him an handkerchief that was on the table, but it could only grab papers and throwing them around, by making the floor a mess.</p><p>“It’s not good for boys your age to cry so much!” the man has told him, his big shadow looming over the boy. “You need to man up, Tony boy, or you’re not going anywhere! Come now, I’ll teach you… and then, if you behave, I’ll buy you pastries!”</p><p>He has increased his “therapy sessions”, and he had started to “teach” him other things, things he promised him to fully explain when the boy was older. It was painful… And Obie gave him some meds, fancy pills and drops of tranquillizer he said they would help him focusing.</p><p>However he must have been a desperate case, because one night that meds made him sick and he ended up in hospital with an intoxication.</p><p>He remembered to have woken up in a strange room, alone. It was dark and he didn’t know where he was. He believed to be in one of those institutions his uncle was constantly menacing him about.</p><p>For the first time Tony experienced a feeling he would be familiar with: panic.</p><p>He had an IV on his right arm and he felt pain everywhere in his stomach and abdomen, so he couldn’t curled too much under the covert, by try to hide himself under it, while mumbling his mother’s song: “There will come a soldier… Who carries a mighty sword… He will tear your city down… O lei o lai o lord…”.</p><p>But no one came until the morning, when his godfather Obadiah came to pick him up again, and drove him home, by suggesting it was better not to tell anything to his mother: she was really sick and worried for her husband Howard, Obie said, and she didn’t need to worry about him as well.</p><p>“Could you be a good boy and keep it quiet?” he had asked him.</p><p>Tony had nodded.</p><p>____________________________________________________</p><p>He didn’t know when it has happened, but it was around 12 when Tony was sure that he liked both boys and girls. Since he was a kid, he knew he was good-looking, and girls at the office were always pleased to have him around: they gave him lollipops and other sweets when his father or Jarvis weren’t watching, and he loved to be cuddled, to have his hair ruffled, and to watch them smiling, running around with their dancing gowns.</p><p>In his mind he was thinking that no math formula could reproduce the swing of a skirt or the rhythm of those heels while they marched together around the corridors, busy and chatting. Not that he hadn’t try, but for once he had to acknowledge that reality was way better than math.</p><p>Since his mind has developed long before his body, he has quiet early discovered many things about life and relationship by simply watching carefully.</p><p>Then once Jarvis sat him down and made him what he referred to as “the talk”: Tony has never seen his friend blushing so hard and really he didn’t get what was the fuss about it; but he got what Jarvis was explaining to him, that was basically how kids were made. He only wondered how things will go when two men or women were involved, but when he asked he saw Jarvis gasped in shock and told him that it was quite “inappropriate”.</p><p>For a moment, Tony has considered to ask his uncle Obie, but he didn’t know why he felt dirty and scared only at the thought.</p><p>So he kept simply watching, until one day he met a lad, a young boy with golden hair and bright blue eyes, who was just wondering around the lab.</p><p>He was the son of a Major General that at the moment was speaking with his father and Obadiah in the meeting room. The boy has come with him because the General’s wife had a bridge meeting and didn’t have time for their shared son, or so the boy told him. He was only one year older than Tony, but he looked way taller and tougher than him. And his hands were long and clean, all the contrary of Tony’s ones, which were always covered in motor oil and have already developed some callouses.</p><p>The boy’s manners were also very gentle, and he and Tony just hanged around for a while, chatting and laughing like old friends, before the boy pushed him against a corner and just asked him directly: “Do you like me?”</p><p>Tony had nodded, because it was true.</p><p>And the other boy had kissed him, but not like the other adults did with him, on the forehead or on the cheek, but on his mouth, like Tony had seen only lovers kissing, in the same corners he was now standing with his new friend. And it was nothing like what he had experienced before with uncle Obie.</p><p>This time Tony liked that sensation, the boy’s humid lips over his own, so he kissed him back, and he felt a fire inside him he has never felt before.</p><p>But then they heard the adults screaming, and the boy jumped away from him with eyes opened in dread fear.</p><p>And out of nothing he punched him hard in the belly and screamed at him: “Don’t touch me, fucking pervert!”</p><p>He had run away where his father was standing, red as a tomato while he shouted to Howard Stark to take his sick boy to a headshrinker and took that perversion out of him when he was still on time.</p><p>And then his father was just standing there, angry at him like Tony has never seen him. He slapped him hard on his face, by making his cheek burn.</p><p>He was about to beat him again, but Obadiah grab his arm and whispered: “Not here, Howard!”</p><p>Everybody was watching and murmuring, so Howard just replied to the other: “Take care of him!”</p><p>He turn to the others and started to shout them to go back to work, that there was nothing to see.</p><p>Obadiah dragged Tony to his office and closed the door. He was just livid, and he spanked him so hard with his belt that he made the boy cried out loud, forcing the man to cover his mouth not to be heard everywhere else.</p><p>“You won’t tell your father this, you hear me, naughty boy?” he hissed in his hear.</p><p>Tony nodded frantically completely wasted.</p><p>He had just recovered a bit, also thanks to the meds Obadiah gave him, when Howard marched in and dragged him back in the car.</p><p>They didn’t speak for the whole journey home, also because Tony felt his head spinning and his stomach twisting like he had to vomit.</p><p>When they arrived, his father just tossed him into the cellar, without even turning the lights on: it was cold, dark and humid, and he could hear the adults screaming on the upper floor.</p><p>But he could also hear the mice scratching in the darkness, and he didn’t know if they were real or it was just his mind making things up. It wouldn’t be the first time: when he took that meds from uncle Obie, sometimes he saw or heard things that weren’t there.</p><p>That time, though, he was alone and in darkness, and he felt the by now notorious feeling of panic running through his veins.</p><p>“There will come a poet… Whose weapon is his word… He will slay you with his tongue O lei o lai o lord” he tried to sing aloud to himself, but his voice was scratching and the words just didn’t came out.</p><p>He started to cry.</p><p>He didn’t know how much time he spent there, but when his father came to take him out he was all but grateful. He slightly noticed that his father was drunk, deeply drunk, more than he usually was in recent times.</p><p>Maybe if he had noticed, he wouldn’t have been that astonished when his father took the belt out and started to beat him hardly.</p><p>Tony cried and shouted, and begged him to stop: “Please, Dad, please stop! I’ll be good!”</p><p>But he was furious, and when the boy tried to run away, he grabbed him by his neck and pushed him against a wall. Tony felt blood running into his eyes, and everything was like fading and distant.</p><p>He believed to have heard his mother screaming: “Good Lord, Howard, stop it! You’ll kill him!”.</p><p>And then maybe there was Jarvis’s voice who shouted: “That’s enough, sir!” And the loud sound of a punch, and then his father screaming at Jarvis: “You are fired, son a bitch!”.</p><p>And then Tony felt the comfortable sensation of Jarvis’s arms carrying him away from the floor, carrying him all the way till the boy’s room while he told him: “Don’t worry, young master Stark! I’ll get you upstairs!”</p><p>He fainted whispering his butler’s name.</p><p>______________________________________________</p><p>He woke up alone once again, and again he found himself in a hospital room, with an IV in his right arm and waves of pain in his head.</p><p>Someone had medicated him, but now he was alone.</p><p>It was around dawn or so he believed from the lights outside.</p><p>Few hours later a nurse came in, but she glanced acid at him and didn’t say a word, just checking his values and his temperature.</p><p>Tony felt fear once again when she left him alone without a word.</p><p>“O lei o lai o lei o lord He will slay you with his tongue O lei o lai o lord” he tried to mumble.</p><p>It was terrible to be close in a plain white room, with nothing to read, to do or to listen to, just the noises of the machines, and of his own breathe.</p><p>His mind was running in different directions, trying to calculate and create impossible things that didn’t exist. In his head, he created a propulsion systems to attach to shoes and some fancy gauntlets with the same propulsions so that men could fly in the sky… so that he could be free!</p><p>Maybe he could build himself an armor, a shiny gold armor like the one he saw in his childish book… but it was but a fantasy and when night came, he was again alone in the darkness: nobody has come to feed him or to change his IV.</p><p>He felt lonely and scared, and even the song couldn’t help him out this time: he cried in his pillow until probably he fell asleep again.</p><p>The next thing he remembered was at daylight, his father standing threating at the end of the bed, while a doctor was murmuring things to him.</p><p>Tony noted that his father had a black eye, and that he hushed the doctor the moment he realized his son was awake. The doctor briefly glanced at the boy and quickly run out.</p><p>“You ashamed me and my company!” his father said out loud. “We lost an important commission from the Army, thanks to your behavior, and now I had also fired Jarvis after all these years!”</p><p>Tony gasped, eyes down, tears already dropping on his chin.</p><p>“Stop crying like a child and man up for once!” his father ordered. He was really pissed. “Now, listen carefully, boy! You have to keep in your mind that you have my surname: and everything a Stark says and does is reflected not only on his own but on the company! Now I couldn’t care less what you like or prefer in your bedroom but as long as we have our incomes from the Army I will not tolerate any… misunderstandings! You’re my son and heir and you will start to behave as one, do you hear me?”</p><p>Tony nodded. “Yes… yes, sir…”</p><p>“Fine! Now we can work to contain the scandal and it won’t be a major issue, since you’re still a boy and look like a child… Jesus, sometimes I wonder if you ever grow up! At least this time it’s fine… but for yours and the company’s sake you will be sent away for a while!”</p><p>Tony’s eyes opened in fear: away? Where? Alone? Are they finally putting him in an institution as his uncle has told him so many times?</p><p>“Don’t even start to cry again, boy!” his father recommended, firmly. “After you made that robot I’ve heard that MIT was considering the possibility of enrolling you even at your age! You have the good numbers and I have the money… and I also need you out of here, so it’s decided! Your mother has already prepared your suitcase, and now you get dressed and I’ll personally escort you there! There will be journalists to wait us, because you’d be the youngest pupil to enter MIT… and you’d better be the youngest to finish it and with top scores, do you hear me?”</p><p>“Yes, sir…” he repeated, but he was crawling inside.</p><p>He has never gone to formal school, but he hated teachers and formal institutions. His previous tutors were exasperated by his incapacity of sit still, of concentrate for more than 5 minutes on the same task if he wasn’t interested… and they were taken aback by his ability to create complex thoughts and reasoning, to grasp concepts and mix notions. Nobody liked to be taught by a 6 years old boy. How come they would like the same for a 12 years old kid, short and skinny? Besides, he may have been 12 but he looked really like a child of 7 or 8 years old.</p><p>And then there were all the other practical issues, like the dorms, the friends, the eating and so on. Tony has never been good in taking care of himself, Obadiah has always told him so. He was lucky that either his mother or Jarvis reminded him to eat, to drink and to sleep.</p><p>Tony has always been a very neat boy, so he hoped not to have problems in this respect. But everything else was scaring as hell, and he cried all his way to Boston.</p><p>______________________________________________________________________________</p><p>His father ordered him to “put his shit together” when they arrived at the MIT main entrance, where the director and a huge group of counsellors and professors were awaiting them, surrounded by a flock of journalists.</p><p>They all pleased and welcomed Mr. Stark senior and his “golden boy”.</p><p>Tony seemed a bit reassured by their smiles and their compliments: maybe they’d like him and he would have had nothing to fear.</p><p>They made them a quick tour of the principal infrastructures, and especially the laboratories.</p><p>Tony was really fascinated by everything. Then he noted a blackboard with a complex equation on it: four or five senior students, probably the professor’s assistants were debating over it. While the director was entertaining his father and the journalists, Tony jumped next to the other guys, by curiously looking at the equation on the blackboard.</p><p>“What’s the problem?” he asked aloud, just to make conversation.</p><p>They looked down at him, astonished. “Hey! Who let a kid in?” one of them exclaimed.</p><p>“Hush! Don’t you see the journalists over there?” another pointed out. “This must be the young Stark… the <em>golden boy</em>…”</p><p>“Jeeeez! I heard he was 12! Why he still look like a baby?”</p><p>“Why do they already despise me?” Tony thought without understanding.</p><p>He has always had problems at understanding human reactions: at least machines are easier to understand and you could program them for an action-reaction behaviors. Humans seem just to act without reason, or at least he hasn’t decoded their patterns yet. Like that time.</p><p>“Well, Stark, let’s see if you are really up to expectations!” the first student mocked him. He pointed at the blackboard: “Professor Pym has left this to us to solve. There’s a miscalculations in the formula of time heist, and we need to find that out… good luck though! We are discussing it for three days and nights straight! Let’s see whether the <em>famous</em> Tony Stark could solve it in 5 minutes!”</p><p>He threw him a chalk and went a bit far away with the others to pour themselves a coffee, laughing at the kid who was reading the complex equations on the blackboard.</p><p>But Tony didn’t notice their disdainful looks, he didn’t notice the journalists who have turn at them and in particular at the boy, he didn’t realize that his father was watching him, that the director and all the professors were like holding their breaths. The only thing that matters to him was the equation in front of him, every line a possibility, a code inside the code, every possibility branching in hundreds of others departing and connecting again not only with the following lines but all the other lines in the equation.</p><p>“Time is not linear, and codes are neither” he told himself. When he has created his Dummy he has needed to think not-binary (he would have seen the pun implied many years from that moment).</p><p>They have said 5 minutes, but only 2 minutes and 45 seconds have passed while he took the eraser and, by helping himself with a chair because he was really short, he started to modify few lines here and there.</p><p>When they acknowledged what he was doing, the other students gasped and tried to stop him, but they were themselves stopped by an imperious gesture of professor Pym himself, who has moved behind the boy. And Tony has just finished and he was staring at the blackboard, nodding in satisfaction.</p><p>“This is not my formula…” he heard a male voice behind him. He turned to front the man who was not paying attention to him, but was studying his code.</p><p>“No, that’s a new one…” Tony replied. “Your formula was right, there was no mistake! It worked theoretically, but no doubts he didn’t work in the real world!”</p><p>“And why do you think so?”</p><p>“Because it missed a variable” the boy said, by indicating at the new line he add added. “There’s always an unknown variable… that’s what may make robot developing connections outside their programmed baselines. That’s what makes the evolution of thoughts and not simply a sequence of action-and-reaction!”</p><p>“Listen to that arrogant brat!” one of the student spitted.</p><p>Tony was taken aback by his comment and by the looks in their eyes, like they already hated him. But why? He has helped both them and professor Pym as they’ve asked: now the code was better and it could work.</p><p>“Make yourself a favor, Hammer, and shut your mouth!” professor Pym was saying to the old guy. Then he turned briefly to Tony and then to his father who was standing near the director and the other astonished professors. “You did a good job with this, Howard! He’s really something!”</p><p>And Tony was just so warmed by the proud look of his father, the way he nodded at him, like for once he had done something valuable. He didn’t mind if the others hated him: as soon as his father was proud of him, everything would be fine!</p><p>“I think, director, that my son would be a useful resource for MIT!” his father was saying while he was greeting his goodbyes.</p><p>“For sure, Mr. Stark, for sure!” the director replied, by shaking his hand.</p><p>Howard turned briefly to Tony.</p><p>The boy didn’t know what he was expecting but maybe a hug or something would have been nice.</p><p>Instead, his father just nodded at him and turned his back on him, leaving his 12 years old boy alone for the first time in the middle of a crowd of strangers.</p><p>Tony had to force himself not to cry like the kid he still was when he saw him jumping in the car and just driving away.</p><p>Everyone seemed to immediately lose interest in him.</p><p>The director had quickly called one guy and ordered him to show Mr. Stark the male dorm main entrance, so that he could find his private room.</p><p>The guy disdainfully looked down at him, and waved him to follow.</p><p>It was not just that he was taller than him, but also that he seemed a player of some sports, and so he was very fast, way faster than Tony’s small legs while he was trying to keep his peace, while also carrying his luggage with him.</p><p>“Hey!” he called him, panting. “Could you please slow down? I- I can’t go this fast!”</p><p>The other stopped and turn at him with a grin. “Oh! So there was something the famous Tony Stark can’t do!”</p><p>He didn’t understand: why everyone seemed mad at him?</p><p>“Maybe if you free yourself from this heavy luggage you’ll be able to run faster…” the guy said, by grabbing at his luggage and simply throwing it in a nearby fountain.</p><p>Tony shouted and run to take it out. But the guy has grabbed him by his fancy suit and he had pushed him down.</p><p>A small crowd has formed and everybody was laughing and inciting the bully.</p><p>“Leave him alone!” Tony heard a voice coming from behind the guy’s back.</p><p>There stood a young man, taller and skinny but of the athletic type. He had a fierce look in his face and, Tony immediately noticed it, campus clothes larger than his actual size. And yes, he was also one of the few black guys he had seen around for the whole day.</p><p>“What do you want, Rhodes?” the guy he was taking him down laugh. “Why don’t you go play with the monkeys like yourselves? Or do you want a bite of this white little chocolate?”</p><p>Everybody laughed again, but the black guy didn’t lose his composure and just make a few steps towards him until he was breathing directly on his face. Tony noticed he was taller than the guy and way more scaring.</p><p>“I’ve said: leave him alone!” he repeated.</p><p>There were maybe 5 or 10 seconds of silence, then the first guy let Tony go, shrugged his shoulders and go away. The small crowd quickly went away, everyone minding again their own business.</p><p>“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” the black guy asked Tony, by kneeling at his side.</p><p>Tony was sniffling but he nodded. “I- I’m fine… thank you!”</p><p>The guy put the books on the floor and helped him raise, then he went to the fountain and took his luggage out of the water: it must be very heavy, but he managed it apparently without effort. Without thinking of it, Tony took the guy’s book in his hands.</p><p>“Come with me!” the guy said, and Tony happily marched alongside him, while inspecting the pile of books.</p><p>“You’re a student too!” he said.</p><p>“Well, what did you expect? A janitor?” the other replied, acid.</p><p>“Why should I?” Tony asked.</p><p>The other guy stopped and looked at him in the eyes.</p><p>“You seriously didn’t get it?” he asked. Then he laughed: “Okay, okay, I’ve heard you were a bit of a weirdo, but, Jesus, I was not expecting that!”</p><p>“I’m not a weirdo!” Tony replied, offended.</p><p>“No, no it’s fine! It’s good to be weird!” the guy reassured him. Then he hold him his right hand: “We haven’t been introduced. My name is James Rhodes, nice to meet you!”</p><p>And the boy smiled at him and shook his long hand in his little one.</p><p>“I’m Tony, Tony Stark. Nice to meet you too!”</p><p>_____________________________________________</p><p>The fountain was not the last prank senior students did to Tony in the first weeks, and many of those pranks were in line of the mean ones, not just for fun. Lucky for him, Rhodes seemed to have self-nominated his protector other than his (for now) only friend.</p><p>“Those damn bastards!” he shouted one morning, when he helped Tony recovering his books and notes from the baskets where they’ve thrown them.</p><p>“It’s okay, Rhodey, don’t worry!” Tony replied.</p><p>After the first days he had tried that nickname, and then he had stuck to that since the other didn’t seem to be offended.</p><p>“I’m pissed, not worry, little T!” the guy told him. “Have they come again at night?”</p><p>Tony nodded but didn’t answer. It was his second week and he hasn’t slept more than a couple of hours in total since he was there.</p><p>First of all the other guys were making pranks on the freshmen and on the little “golden boy” in particular. And then there was Tony’s incapacity to stay alone, especially at nights.</p><p>He was normally scared by nights, but since he has started his “therapy sessions” with uncle Obie, his fears have doubled; he has even spoken with him but he has said that it was normal due to Tony’s mental issues, and that he had to let nobody notice it or they would have close him in a house for crazy kids. But Tony wasn’t crazy, Obie had continued, he was just a bit broken, and all broken things can be fixed.</p><p>But now Tony was simply wasted and everybody started to notice it, especially the professors. Some of them  have made a formal interrogation to the director on the opportunity of letting a boy following their classes if he barely managed to stay awake during the lectures.</p><p>“Listen, Rhodey, I may have made a thing… but please don’t be mad at me!” Tony asked the tall guy.</p><p>Rhodes sighed by rolling his eyes: “You know, we should improve your communication skills, little T! If you started a sentence with “don’t be mad”, one turns already mad!”</p><p>“Really?” Tony asked, surprised.</p><p>“Oh, boy, have you ever had friends?”</p><p>“Well, there was Jarvis… he was my father’s butler…”</p><p>“No, T, I mean your age friends!”</p><p>Tony scratched his head: was he supposed to have had one? Two? Maybe more?</p><p>“Okay, okay, never mind…” Rhodes said. “What did you do and why I could get mad at you?”</p><p>The boy looked at his feet in a very childish manner. “Well, the director summoned me in his office this morning, and he told me that they’ve been complaints on my behavior in class… like the fact I couldn’t stay awake during lessons and that I didn’t pay attention. So… well, to put it simple, I said that I needed someone to share the room with because it wasn’t easy for me to just take care of everything around. And I… well, I may have insinuated that you would be up to the job!”</p><p>He closed his eyes, by expecting the other to shout outraged.</p><p>“Do you want me to be your butler, Stark?” he indeed hissed.</p><p>“NO!” the boy immediately replied. “Of course not, Rhodey! But I’m alone because nobody wanted to share the room with a kid! And you’re alone because… well, I don’t get why you’re alone, but that’s it! So I thought that we could have shared the room, so that maybe they would let me in peace because they are all scared to death by you… and by the way you need to teach how to scare them back, because you can’t always be there to pull me outside the oil tank like yesterday!”</p><p>He saw Rhodes considering him for a while and he thought: “Great! Now he will think I’m just a kid having a tantrum!”</p><p>“Tony? You’ve said that out loud!”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“The kid with a tantrum thing…” Rhodes said and he was trying not to laugh at Tony’s astonished face.</p><p>“I am in urgent need to sleep!” the boy declared falling on his butt.</p><p>Rhodes was quite sure the other could manage to just fall asleep right there and now. He considered it for a bit and then made up his mind.</p><p>“Okay, fine, T! Come with me!” he said.</p><p>And Tony simply followed him like a chicken with the goose, until they arrived at Rhodey’s dorm room. The boy noticed that there were indeed two beds but that only one side seemed occupied.</p><p>“Rule 1” Rhodey said by closing the door behind them, “I don’t make your bed or put your stuff in order, so you better take care of yourself!”</p><p>Tony nodded.</p><p>“Rule 2: I’d like to study in peace and silence, so if you make a mess during the exam session I’ll kick you out! Rule 3: well, it hasn’t happened yet, but in case I need the bedroom free because I have company, I’ll need you to find yourself another room for a couple of hours, is that clear?”</p><p>“Company in the sense… that you come here with a boy or a girl to make sex?”</p><p>He saw Rhodey frowning a bit and then laughing. “Okay okay, yes maybe I’ve had to phrase it that way, but, T, you’re way too direct!”</p><p>Tony blushed, then glanced at the free bed.</p><p>“May I sleep now?” he asked, pitiful.</p><p>“All right, all right, little T! Here! We will collect your things later!”</p><p>“Will you stay there?” Tony asked, a bit worried.</p><p>“Of course! I need to study… contrary to someone else here I didn’t know math by divine infusion!”</p><p>“Nobody’s infusions… I’ve studied that…” Tony muffled, already curled up in the covert, all dressed as he was.</p><p>“Oh yes, and when? When you were 5? No, please, don’t tell me…” Rhodey mocked him, but then he smiled when he saw him already asleep.</p><p>Tony slept almost 12 hours straight.</p><p>Rhodey went out to speak to the director, and to collect Tony’s stuff from his room. He moved everything into his own, went out for dinner, and went back long past dinner… and the boy was still sleeping in the same curled position. Rhodey shook his head and went to sleep as well.</p><p>At 2 AM Tony woke up and panicked badly: he was pretty sure that this was not his room at the Stark’s mansion, not in any other houses he has been with his family.</p><p>There was few light and there was someone he didn’t know sleeping in another bed. He was panting hard, and automatically tried to mumbled his mother’s song to calm himself down.</p><p>But the mumbling awoke the other guy, who shouted: “What the fuck, T!”</p><p>Tony retracted into an angle, eyes opened in dread.</p><p>The other boy turned on the light and looked worried at him, while he was asking: “Hey, Tony, are you all right? Did you have a nightmare?”</p><p>And then suddenly he remembered everything.</p><p>“Rhodey!” he exclaimed like a revelation. He looked around: “We are at the MIT campus… but this is not my room…”</p><p>“You’re damn right this is not your room, T! This is <em>our</em> room since this afternoon… you insisted and made all the fuss with the director for having a roommate!”</p><p>Tony calmed down: now everything was clear. He looked around and saw his things next to his bed.</p><p>“You said you’re not my butler!” he mocked the older guy.</p><p>“You’re damn right, I’m not!” the other laughed back. “But you were taking your beauty sleep and I thought better to collect your things before some assholes throw them into the garbage. You can repay me later by explaining to me that fucking dynamic stuff professor Harrison was talking about this morning… even if you were sleeping I’m pretty sure you already knew all that stuff!”</p><p>Tony shrugged. “Yeah, it’s pretty basic stuff…”</p><p>“And here comes another lesson for your special social skill class: never reply like that to a guy and especially a girl who is already feeling stupid by asking a question to a child!”</p><p>“I’m not a child!” Tony sounded offended.</p><p>“Yes, you are!” Rhodes replied, and he jumped over him and tickled him.</p><p>Tony laughed hard.</p><p>“Better?” Rhodes asked him after a while. “Should we go back to sleep?”</p><p>Tony nodded.</p><p>“Hey, Rhodey!” he called when the other turned the light down.</p><p>“What now, T?”</p><p>“Thank you… for being my friend!”</p><p>_______________________________________________________</p><p>_______________________________________________________</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The song is quoted here is “Soldier, Poet, King” by The Oh Hellos. This song has been written in 2015, so it’s impossible that Tony’s mother sang it to him. However, the song and the album addressed the topic of family/domestic abuse, and, according to another interpretation the soldier is Joshua who in the Bible destroyed the town of Jericho… And it just seems perfect! Plus, I love this song, and the idea that little hurt Tony kept repeating that a soldier, a poet and a king will come to save him… I let you guess which one is who in the series!</p><p>I'm in the debt with the fandom for the many different fanonic ideas about kid!Tony. This is just my contribution...<br/>Please, leave a comment if you like it and/or if you have ideas for potential spin-off or "what if"... or just to keep in touch! :D</p></blockquote></div></div>
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